


tony's lab (or, screw you, peter quill)

by kingdavidbowie



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asexual Bruce, M/M, Science Boyfriends, and then the skrulls attacked, if I can't explain my feelings I'll just use science to tell you, nick fury is really just done with everything, sarcasm is great, tony needs more sleep not more coffee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 16:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1751168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingdavidbowie/pseuds/kingdavidbowie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce's lab at S.H.I.E.L.D. gets blown up by Skrulls (because of logical reasons but also because Peter Quill and the rest of his team suck) and the new one he ends up in while his is being rebuilt ends up being a shared one with Tony. It's a good thing they both like the same music so much.  (One-shot.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	tony's lab (or, screw you, peter quill)

Bruce Banner tried closing his eyes to make it all go away but when he opened them nothing had changed except maybe that things were a little worse. He watched from the Avenger's retreating quinjet out his window as his S.H.I.E.L.D. lab went up in violent flames. The rest of them were trying to draw his attention away from the scene, but he kept looking until someone was kind enough to stick something in his arm and make everything else disappear, too.

When he woke up he was in bed in some sparsely decorated room that faintly reminded him of a hospital room but wasn't white or smooth enough for that. He wasn't wearing the purplish dress shirt he'd gone down in; this was a black shirt advertising some band he didn't- oh, Deep Purple. At least there was his favorite color in the name. And he still had his pants from before, which was a plus, he figured.

He was feeling suspicious about the television set into the wall, something about it, when there was a knock at the door. Fury. Bruce pushed the sheets he'd been messily wrapped up in away from himself but made no move to get up; he was still trying to figure out what this was. What had happened before he'd fallen asleep? No, he'd been sticked, and-

"Your lab's gone, Banner."

"Yeah..." He nodded, rubbed at the back of his neck. "What about the rest of the buildings? Did the Guardians get to saving those?" The Guardians of the Galaxy team had been heading over when his lab had blown up, he was recalling now. The Skrulls had come in weapons already firing, and a spare shot hitting his area of the place and reacting with all the radioactive gamma research such and such inside hadn't even given his lab a fighting chance. All of it, gone.

Fury was the one looking awkward now, as awkward as a man like him could get. "Actually- they managed to save all of them. Except your lab." His face was frustratingly blank, Bruce thought, with not enough sympathy. All of his work from the last year- a lot of it saved to computers, yes, but the actual experiments, that was different-

He lifted his head; he could see his messed-up hair out of the edges of his vision . "They saved everything but my lab," he repeated, trying to comprehend this. 

"None of the others were hit directly like yours was," Fury clarified, still avoiding Bruce's eyes in all his power and position. "And, of course, with your experiments being highly volatile- that didn't help." 

He looked somewhat surprised to see Bruce's lips turning up in a smile, however bitter it was, to hear the sardonic laughter bubbling up through the space between them. "Fucking Peter Quill," the scientist was mumbling, his eyes flashing slightly. "Fucking..." Fury was about to intervene, possibly by slapping the almost mad silliness off Bruce's face, when Bruce's expression clouded over, smooth now. "So what now?" he asked. "I find a bench in Central Station and work there, sleep there?" 

Fury resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the scientist's sarcasm and straightened his coat collar. "Your lab's being rebuilt; for now, we hoped you'd find this place amenable." Bruce glanced around the room and came back to the window, focusing on it. New York looked pretty small down there; he sighed. Another fifty-story S.H.I.E.L.D. building he hopefully wouldn't break. "We've got a set-up for you here, for the moment."

"All the toys?"

Fury smiled faintly, the same darkness to Bruce's expressions in his. "Most of them, I'd say."

\--------------

Automatic doors, good security, nice tech- "This place is actually pretty nice," Bruce said to Fury, looking around the room. It made up an entire floor of the building apparently, with windows making up three sides and perhaps a fourth that was covered up by all the lab machinery pushed up against it. The place was a bit of an organized mess, probably whatever was left from whoever they'd pushed out of there to make room for him. He didn't feel particularly guilty about that. There were a lot of spare parts around, he noted, and wondered just what their creator had been trying to build. Automatic weapons, it looked like.

"The things we salvaged from your lab are set over there," Fury said, gesturing, but Bruce was too enchanted with the place to answer with anything but "I think I might want to stay here". His companion gave an unnoticed snort of humor.

"Have fun, kid," he said roughly, already fading into the unacknowledged parts of Bruce's vision along with the elevator door and everything else on that side of the room. The scientist was staring out the window with eyes rather unlike his usual ones- when was the last time he had felt an air of excitement like this? At the same time, he realized with somewhat of an unsettling thought, maybe that wasn't a good thing. Nice view, sure- but there was something familiar about it that he wasn't sure he was alright with.

He tried shaking the feeling off after it settled- God, the tech in this place would make Pym or Stark jealous- but it stayed along for the ride anyway. He shrugged; he was used to dragging things around. He'd figure it out eventually.

He spent the morning- no, it was afternoon, he noticed suddenly with a bit of confusion- going through the remnants of his old lab and setting himself up. There was a number of computers that seemed to have been designated for his use and he was able to access via S.H.I.E.L.D.'s probably-too-extensive database most of his previous work that had been saved. He found a chair he really liked that spun. 

After he was finished moving in Bruce spent a minute eyeing all of it before deciding to take a breather before he did anything else. He found himself a spot in a corner where two of the windowed walls hit and sat down, palms up on his folded legs. Meditation wasn't really his thing, if only because he knew it didn't do anything for him, but he did it anyway sometimes. It was nice to sit, to close his eyes.

A few hours of setting up his research experiments later- the lab's previous owner had left a lot more things laying around than he'd noticed before, something odd about that- he was meditating again, or at least sitting as if he was and listening to music off of his salvaged iTunes account. Tony had asked him once, probably during the New York thing, how he kept himself in check. Smooth jazz? Sex? Weed? He wasn't particularly interested in any of them as vices for the other guy's presence but he did like music. Not to calm him down; if anything, fast and loud music just made the monster inside him more agitated than usual. But he was a bit fond of old fifties and sixties tunes, even if they did make him feel like Steve Rogers when he compared himself to the rest of their makeshift team.

Then the phone rang. Or, well, there was incoming call alert coming up on all his screens. Where was the phone? He jumped up and messed up a good amount of the parts left on the previous owner's table finding the thing before he was able to pick up.

"Tony?" Familiar voice, he could pinpoint it.

"Pepper?" Crap.

"Bruce?" 

He sighed.

"This is Stark Tower, isn't it?" he said aloud, then asked, addressing Tony Stark's secretary, "You're looking for Tony, right?"

"He's not there," she assumed. Bruce could almost hear the gears in her brain turning around and processing this, trying to figure out where to call next. "Alright- yeah, he did mention that you were staying for a while."

"Not to me," Bruce mumbled. 

"I'll have J.A.R.V.I.S. locate him," Pepper said promptly, ignoring the comment. "Welcome, anyway, Bruce."

"Thanks," he said, trying not to sound so wry but not doing too well in the respect. The call ended and he put the phone back in place. No wonder it had been so piled up with other things on top; Tony probably never used the actual thing. Tony- he was in freaking Stark Tower. Of course he was. S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't want him in a lab of theirs that wasn't Hulk-proof, but sticking him with Stark didn't have nearly the same dangers. To them, anyway. 

\--------------

He was beginning to wonder if Tony had actually abandoned the place just for his sake when the elevator swished open with what he swore was a flourish and the man himself walked in. Before "hello" came out through his open mouth Bruce was spinning around in his (new favorite) chair and going, "Thanks for the welcome party."

"That's a nice shirt," Tony said back, and Bruce realized whose shirt it was that he was wearing. His gut reaction was split between ripping it off and trying to see if it smelled like money. "Is shawarma good enough?" he asked wryly, already opening up the paper bag before he'd dropped it on Bruce's desk. 

God, it smelled heavenly. The beast inside him was placated for the moment.

\--------------

A number of days later he was considering the idea that the only thing he liked about sharing a lab with Tony- because that was what they were doing now, when Tony wasn't gone playing diplomat and Iron Man and playboy- was the food. He had grown fairly accustomed in the last few years, in both India and New York, to eating when he remembered to, when he wasn't working. He wasn't all that great at remembering. His therapist was always pointing out that healthy eating habits and proper amounts of sleep were the staple of sanity, but when he started working that wasn't the sort of thing he thought about. He usually didn't think of it until he was already feeling depressed.

Tony was the opposite, with food anyway. While he stayed out most days he stayed up late at night in the lab working on designs for weapons, future helicarriers, anything a person could think of and more because, well, Tony Stark. But he did always have something on hand that Bruce didn't mind, even if his appetite wasn't much. It was the best part of living with him.

The worst- what was the worst part? He wasn't sure if it was the extra-loud rock music (the other guy definitely wasn't into it) or the coffee (he preferred tea; coffee was also agitating) or the fact that Tony always seemed to be looking over his shoulder as if checking to make sure Bruce wasn't about to hulk out and start breaking the place. Maybe it was some other small thing. There was something funny about it, though, the annoying things Tony did. They made him laugh, somehow. There was a certain happy ring to all the things he said that angered the monster and didn't bring him out- they were things Bruce had liked in a past life and had gotten used to living without. And now all the habits and the witticisms were back again, and he was in control enough to take them, and that made him feel more free than he thought he had been.

Not that he didn't act annoyed in all his partially defeated depression. 

"Something's going to get busted if you try offering me coffee one more time," he told Tony, more irritated than matter-of-fact about it. He was also half-smiling in his madness. "He's waking up again."

And Tony, freaking Tony, just smirked and got closer in Bruce's face and said "hello" to the other guy. Bruce grimaced, wondering just how much control Tony thought he had over the thing inside of his head. "I get you coffee every morning, you realize that? I stop at Starbucks and I get mine and then try ordering something you'll like and then I come back and you just glare at me," Tony said, setting the drink tray down as he did so.

"Maybe you shouldn't do that, then."

"Oh, but eventually I'll find something. Even if it's chocolate milk, or something."

He considered that seriously before Tony rolled his eyes and Bruce saw that he was kidding.

Then there were the conversations Tony had with other people, most of them via the phone but some of them with actual visitors to the lab. Namely Steve, who preferred face-to-face to the cell phone he never used. He'd come over when he didn't have anything better to do, curious to see what Tony was working on for S.H.I.E.L.D. Bruce usually stayed out of the way when Steve came up, but he still listened because the guy could really make him grin. 

The soldier was gesturing at one of Tony's screens when he said, "And that, that's a..." And Tony gave him the name of some long-titled weapon with enough numbers that each additional one after two made Steve's alienated expression worsen. 

"It's very... big," he offered as a compliment. He probably couldn't have sounded more disinterested if he'd tried. Bruce could get that the guy wasn't into heavy advanced weaponry. He could get why Tony was. He just stayed out of it and worked on his side of the lab, allowing himself to let slip small smiles when he looked up and saw Steve's face. Why anyone had ever thought the two could work together was beyond him; the fact that they even tried was admirable, to say the least. Their obvious differences were hilarious, Bruce thought, in their palpableness.

He came to realize that Tony knew he was laughing behind the scenes and was trying to make it happen more often. He wasn't sure how he felt about that when he really thought about it, but he kept himself busy enough with his cure research that he didn't have to contemplate very often. He let himself laugh under his breath when Steve asked what Bruce was doing in Tony's lab and got the response, "Welp, his idea of a date is doing science instead of, say, going out for a movie. But at least he doesn't mind having sex where he works." (Actually, maybe that one hadn't been under his breath.) He didn't give Tony the satisfaction of having accomplished anything else outside of the nice meals. He didn't want to. 

Throughout it all the other guy was stirring, more often than not when Tony was around rather than otherwise. He figured it was because of the man's infuriating nature. If anyone could bring the Hulk out with sarcasm alone... Bruce was probably more sarcastic than Tony was, and more darkly so, but the monster was used to living in places like that. Tony was different.

Yeah, Tony was very different.

\--------------

Fury checked in on them every few days; he seemed to be expecting Bruce and Tony to be having some Steve-and-Tony-esque disagreement every time he called on the video screen. Both of them humored by this, he and Tony alternated between pretend cat fights and sarcastically offering up the dating thing as a solution to their "issues". Eventually Fury would get sick of it and stop asking after him, Bruce figured. 

It was nice not having people checking on him so often. Staring, more like. After a while even Tony stopped doing it, and that was another couple pounds of pressure off, too. Bruce reveled in his lightness.

It'd been a week or so when Tony looked over at Bruce's side of the lab and went from his own chair, "You really think you're going to find a cure?"

Bruce stopped what he was doing but didn't look up from his hands on the keyboard. After a moment of silence he said, finally, "I don't know that I will. Just that if I don't look, I won't. And I’ll always be... this." He shrugged. More quiet.

"If you want help with that-"

He shook his head. "I'm alright." He didn't like the idea of involving Tony in his dirty work when he had more important things to be doing. 

So Tony just shrugged too and went back to his own work.

\--------------

It was usually around eleven that Tony got back to stay around rather than work for a brief half hour and then have to be somewhere else again. It was usually around eleven that the Hulk was more awake than any other time of day (or, well, night).

It was probably all the abrupt changes in environment- from Elvis and Chuck Berry to ACDC, leftover sandwiches to hot pizza, relative calm to the presence of Tony Stark himself. Bruce couldn't imagine himself ever being relaxed with Tony in the room; there would always be some odd knot of tension in his neck when the other man was there. But he was getting used to that.

The feeling, though- that eleven-at-night feeling of sudden awakeness and tension, even of some kind of desperation, perhaps- kept coming back and he wasn't used to it as a whole. The monster stomped around inside of him while Tony talked and it made him shiver, and that prompted Tony to drop his jacket over Bruce's shoulders, which made the whole damn thing start over again. It got worse when Tony was closer so Bruce tried to stay to his side of the lab when he was able to. It was usually alright but some days he just wasn't very fortunate.

Clint calling around midnight about some spy-type tech that Tony was working on, making some comment about the other guy always answering the phone when Tony wasn't there. Tony saying, "I have to provide for my wife at home, don't I?" and not referring to Pepper or some other woman. Natasha alluding to the fact that Tony hadn't spent the night anywhere but in his lab since Bruce had moved in and Tony not saying anything. 

Fury mentioning the progress of his lab being rebuilt. Steve looking at him and Tony strangely. Thor assuming they were in some sort of unbusiness-like relationship when he visited. Pepper's voice changing when she talked to Bruce and not Tony. 

"They think we're having sex," he said out loud, sighing. He shoved the keyboard away from him and turned the computer screen closest to him toward the windows. He didn't feel like looking at the failed cures.

"They're joking," Tony argued, and Bruce remembered that he wasn't alone. "That doesn't bother you, does it? 'Cause I'm not above giving wedgies to American icons," he considered, tilting his head. But he did look concerned.

It was a sciencey problem, Bruce thought perhaps a bit wildly. Feeling reckless, he got up from his chair and went over by Tony, cautiously reached out and touched a piece of the other man's dark hair with the tips of his fingers. "I don't know," he said in answer to the question. He ducked his head a little, bringing his face closer to Tony's. "It's odd, isn't it?"

"Very much so," Tony agreed, then gently pushed his lips onto Bruce's until they were touching, and kissing. 

Bruce had mixed feelings about it. He wasn't sure if this was odd or not now, didn't know how he felt. Not bad. Not good because he felt better than that. But it was weird, most definitely. Especially with the beast inside of him urging him both to keep going and to smash Tony into pieces. He pulled back, still hovering in the same place he had been.

"That was a..." He didn't know.

And then Tony said something that sounded like the heavy weapon with all the numbers in the name that Steve hadn't liked because Bruce couldn't really comprehend it. 

"Right," he said awkwardly, still not moving away because he didn't want to. What had Tony said? He'd said something like- Oh, more kissing. Bruce found himself getting closer, his arms twining around Tony and he wasn't sure if it was the beast or him that was doing it. Then there was Tony pulling at the buttons of Bruce's shirt, and Bruce jumping back because no, that was definitely weird. Odd. Very much so.

Tony looked confused.

Bruce didn't know how the hell to explain it, or how to even put it into legible thoughts in his own head. The stupid beast was tromping around inside and making it nearly impossible. He breathed out, catching himself on the edge of Tony's desk before he started falling from all the swaying he was doing. "That started out nicely," he said, wanting to look at Tony and not wanting to.

"But...?" Tony bit his lip. "If that was uncomfortable I'm sorry about-"

Bruce grimaced. "No, it wasn't! Not at first! But- the shirt thing, that was-"

"Too fast?"

He shook his head. That wasn't it. "I've never wanted to," he said simply, not really realizing it fully until he said it like that. "This is going to be weird," he laughed, just a little bitterly. "You..." You twist me up in knots on the inside and make me feel on the verge of hulking out every time you talk. Or something. "I just don't want- that-" He started to move away but Tony caught his hand. And then awkwardly pulled back when he saw Bruce's face.

"Science?" he offered, and Bruce got it immediately.

"You produce a heck of a lot of messy chemical reactions in my brain but I don't want to have sex with you because- I don't know, I-"

And then Tony was looking all different again. He was blinking. "That's it?"

"What?"

"Sex?"

"I... guess so?"

Tony got closer to Bruce again, peering at his face. "You're not homophobic or- straight, or-" 

Bruce's face broke into a laugh that crumpled his smooth features. "What, you didn't think about that before you decided to kiss me?" The k-word came out a little awkwardly in spite of himself. The laughing only got worse when Tony started doing the same thing, laughing, his face dark with red.

"I'm so confused," he said honestly, for once without a sarcastic comment to accentuate the sentiment. 

Eleven was definitely a weird time.

"Want to get coffee tomorrow?" Bruce asked, poking Tony in the arm cautiously. Screw the Hulk, he could always order tea.

Tony said yes, and did add a sharp witticism at the end of it.

\--------------

It was a few weeks later that he figured out the asexual thing, and just how far his limits went. It was kind of like having a different sort of Hulk inside, one that got weirded out at some indeterminable line but was perfectly alright with having Tony's tongue inside his mouth. It was a few days later that they made coffee runs in the morning a thing, with Tony ordering the strongest Starbucks had and Bruce ordering the weakest, mostly. It was a few months later that Fury was on the video screen again, telling him that his new lab was finished. 

Bruce looked over at Tony, and already Fury was rolling his eyes. 

"Please don't tell me you're not coming," he said, the look already on his face. He was looking at Bruce's shirt. Top button undone. Not the second.

"I've decided to keep him," Tony cut in, moving in front of the camera on Bruce's computer. "How much do you want for him?"

Bruce laughed.


End file.
